HAVING a condition that no one
understands is bad enough. Having one that many also doubt the existence of is
worse. Yet that has been the unenviable fate of millions of people diagnosed
with chronic fatigue syndrome.

CFS first entered the medical
lexicon in 1988 to describe a cluster of symptoms without an obvious cause that
doctors were seeing in the Lake Tahoe area of Nevada. The principal symptom was
debilitating tiredness, but people also complained of sore throats, headaches,
muscle pain and various other manifestations of general malaise.

The lack of a clear biological
cause, the fuzziness of the symptoms and the fact that many of the people
diagnosed were young professionals opened the door to a smear campaign. The
media were quick to dub CFS "yuppie flu".

Although it has shaken off some
of its more pejorative nicknames in recent years, CFS has struggled to lose the
stigma. People with the syndrome still say they are not taken seriously, blamed
for their illness, or accused of malingering. Treatments are often psychiatric,
which are a great help to many but unintentionally add weight to the idea that
CFS has no physical cause.

Over the years, medical groups
have launched campaigns to have CFS taken more seriously. The latest was in
February, when the US Institute of Medicine proposed making a clean break with
the past by renaming it systemic exertion intolerance disease. This has not
caught on as yet.

The unsatisfactory state of
affairs is largely a reflection of the fact that we do not have a good
biological explanation for CFS. That has not been for lack of trying, but even
here the disease seems to be a magnet for controversy. A paper published in
2009 in Science claimed to have found an association between CFS and a mouse
virus. The paper was later retracted after other teams failed to replicate the
result.

Now there is hope of a
breakthrough. Researchers in Norway have been trialling a drug normally used to
knock out white blood cells in people with lymphoma and rheumatoid arthritis.
Two thirds of the people who took it experienced major remission of CFS
symptoms, essentially returning to normal life, with bursts of vitality
unthinkable while they were ill (see "Antibody wipeout relieves symptoms
of chronic fatigue syndrome").

The discovery – which sprang from
a serendipitous observation – offers more than just the promise of a
much-needed treatment. It also suggests that the symptoms are somehow caused by
antibodies originally produced to fight off an infection. The researchers
speculate that they might disrupt blood flow, leaving muscles drained of
energy.

If correct, this brings the
scientific story full circle. CFS was initially suspected to be a
"post-viral" syndrome – the lingering after-effects of an infection
with Epstein-Barr. More importantly, it could offer people diagnosed with CFS
both physical relief and psychological closure.

There are wider implications too.
Pain and fatigue without an obvious cause account for a large percentage of
visits to the doctor, and usually have an unsatisfactory outcome. On top of
that, there are many other conditions – Morgellons, for example – that struggle
for credibility. If the CFS mystery is finally solved, that offers hope to
countless others struggling with unexplained symptoms. It may take another
serendipitous discovery, but science is good at those.

About Me

I am a Christian, saved by grace alone through faith alone. I have had the neuroimmune disorder ME, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, since 1991. From North Somerset, now in N. Ireland. Please see my website for further information about ME.